Long-form explainers on African history, governance, economics, culture, and the systems shaping the continent now — written by historians, practitioners, and diaspora thinkers. Open to read; sign up to write or follow contributors.
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Editor's picks — long reads worth your evening.
The phrase *umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu* — 'a person is a person through other people' — has been mass-printed onto coffee mugs, hashtagged onto corporate diversity slides, and generally drained of …
When historians describe medieval Mali they usually start with gold. That is the wrong end of the story. Gold was the commodity but the genius of the Malian state, especially …
For a century after Carl Mauch publicized Great Zimbabwe in 1871, European antiquarians insisted the walls were built by Phoenicians, by Sabaeans, by anyone except the Shona who had been …
Fresh writing from contributors across the diaspora.
M-Pesa, the Kenyan mobile-money system launched by Safaricom in 2007, is routinely described as African leapfrog innovation. That framing is partly right and partly misleading. …
Between 2020 and 2023 the African Union faced six successful military coups in its member states: Mali (twice), Burkina Faso (twice), Guinea, and Niger. In …
The Asante state that Otumfuo Osei Tutu I and the priest-statesman Okomfo Anokye consolidated around 1701 is usually taught as a 'kingdom.' That is misleading. …
The historic medinas of Marrakech, Cairo, Fez, Tunis, and Sana'a have been treated by UNESCO and by domestic planning authorities as heritage sites. That is …
Olaudah Equiano's *The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African* (1789) is among the most important first-person accounts of …
South Sudan became independent on 9 July 2011 with control over approximately 75% of what had been Sudan's oil production — the Greater Nile, Petrodar, …